Two days ago, Trump visited the White House to prepare for his Presidency, and part of that involves his being brought up to speed on ALL aspects of Obama's foreign policy. It turns out that the very same day, the Treasury Department all of a sudden announced that al Nusra is a terrorist organization, making any funding or support for them illegal. Check it out at this linkFor years Obama has been playing a dirty game of opposing certain terrorists in Iraq, while supporting them in Syria. Nusra is particularly bad, these are the thugs who have beheaded bishops, terrorized...

Thursday, October 27, 2016 It's a Mad, Mad War Posted by Daniel Greenfield Russia and the West are fighting to decide whether Syria will be run by Sunni Islamists backed by Saudi Arabia or Shiite Islamists backed by Iran. This insane civil war has burned up countless lives, not to mention plenty of dollars, rubles, euros and pounds. The only certain winners of this war, once the dust has settled, will chant “Allahu Akbar” and call for the death of the infidels. Sadly this is nothing new. Russia got the PLO started before Bill Clinton decided to become its sugar...

As the US officially enters the Yemen military campaign, the UK appears ready and willing to precipitate a catalytic event from which there is no going back. With relations between Russia and the West at post-Cold War lows and deteriorating fast, Royal Air Force (RAF) pilots have been given the go-ahead to shoot down Russian military jets when flying missions over Syria and Iraq, if they are endangered by them.

Andrew Mitchell, a senior member of the UK's parliament and former international development secretary, said to the BBC that the UK must be willing to shoot down Russian jets to supposedly protect civilians on the ground. "What we are saying is very clear. No one wants to see a firefight with Russia, no one wants to shoot down a Russian plane," Mitchell said. "But what we do say is that the international community has an avowed responsibility to protect and that protection must be exerted. "If that means confronting Russia air power defensively, on behalf of the innocent people on...

Secretary of State John Kerry accused Russia and Syrian dictator Bashar Assad of committing war crimes in their assault on rebel-held territory, including hospitals and aid workers, and called for an investigation. "Russia and the regime owe the world more than an explanation about why they keep hitting hospitals, medical facilities, children and women," Kerry said before a meeting with French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault. "These are acts that beg for an appropriate investigation of war crimes and those that commit these would and should be held accountable for these actions. They're beyond the accidental now, way beyond, years beyond...

U.S. President Barack Obama and his top foreign policy advisers are expected to meet on Friday to consider their military and other options in Syria as Syrian and Russian aircraft continue to pummel Aleppo and other targets, U.S. officials said. Some top officials argue the United States must act more forcefully in Syria or risk losing what influence it still has over moderate rebels and its Arab, Kurdish and Turkish allies in the fight against Islamic State, the officials told Reuters. One set of options includes direct U.S. military action such as air strikes on Syrian military bases, munitions depots...

U.S. President Barack Obama and his top foreign policy advisers are expected to meet on Friday to consider their military and other options in Syria as Syrian and Russian aircraft continue to pummel Aleppo and other targets, U.S. officials said. Some top officials argue the United States must act more forcefully in Syria or risk losing what influence it still has over moderate rebels and its Arab, Kurdish and Turkish allies in the fight against Islamic State, the officials told Reuters. One set of options includes direct U.S. military action such as air strikes on Syrian military bases, munitions depots...

Could psycho elites start WWIII? What’s going on here, in Syria? It all seems to be maybe heavily screened and minimized by the Google Machine, but as far as I can see, Vladimir Putin’s Russia is “assisting” the President of Syria, Bashar al-Assad, as he battles “rebels” who are trying to take him down and out and probably kill him.

Russia has warned the United States not to intervene militarily in Syria against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, threatening that it may shoot down any aircraft attempting to launch strikes. In a bluntly worded statement, a spokesman for Russia’s defense ministry warned that Russia and the Syrian government had deployed sufficient air defenses to block any potential attacks.

Russia has confirmed it has sent an S-300 air defence missile system to its naval base in Syria's port of Tartus. Defence ministry spokesman Igor Konashenkov said the purpose of the system was to guarantee the security of the base from the air. The move comes amid growing tension with the West. On Monday, the US halted talks with Russia on trying to co-ordinate air strikes against jihadists.

Moscow. 2 October. INTERFAX.RU - All-Russian Emergency Situations Ministry will hold a training session for civil defense, which will cover more than 40 million people, according to "Interfax" the director of the Civil Defence Department of the Ministry Oleg Manuilov. "Training will be held from October 4 to 7 will be attended by more than 40 million people, more than 200 thousand professionals rescue units, 50 thousand pieces of equipment..." - He said. federal agencies are involved in the executive, heads of regions, local authorities and organizations. Also working out of civil defense will involve abnormal emergency rescue teams. During...

As relations between Russia and the US disintegrate as a result of the escalating proxy war in Syria, which today culminated with Putin halting a Plutonium cleanup effort with the US, shortly before the US State Department announced it would end negotiations with Russia over Syria, tomorrow an unprecedented 40 million Russian citizens, as well as 200,000 specialists from "emergency rescue divisions" and 50,000 units of equipment are set to take part in a four day-long civil defense, emergency evacuation and disaster preparedness drill, the Russian Ministry for Civil Defense reported on its website. According to the ministry, an all-Russian...

How Americans Are Being Lied To: Virginia State Senator Richard Black Debunks MSM Lie about Battle for Aleppo (Republican former USMC) Republican Senator Black (ex-USMC officer) bravely provides complete disclosure that Obama is conducting an unlawful war and intentionally continues to support Al-Queda and related ISIS rebel terrorists that threaten the middle east, Europe and the US. https://southfront.org/how-americans-are-being-lied-to-virginia-state-senator-richard-black-debunks-msm-lie-about-battle-for-aleppo/ Video Interview: Virginia State Senator Richard Black speaks about the reality on the ground in Syria’s Aleppo and debunks the lies in the main stream media. https://youtu.be/VfyDgDTu0Go

Graphic Photos *********************************************** A wounded Syrian child looks on from inside a vehicle following a reported airstrike on Kafr Batna in the outskirts of the capital Damascus Credit: AMER ALMOHIBANY/AFP ****************************************Syrian rebels and civilians in the besieged eastern half of Aleppo are bracing for an onslaught ground assault by Syrian regime forces and their Shia fighter allies which could once and for all end the opposition’s resistance in the city. US officials said they were seeing signs that thousands of troops from across the Shia world - including Syrian regime soldiers, Iranian Revolutionary Guards, Hizbollah fighters, Iraqi militiamen and Afghan mercenaries...

Russia is sending more warplanes to Syria to ramp up its campaign of air strikes, a Russian newspaper reported on Friday, as Moscow defied global censure over an escalation that Western countries say has torpedoed diplomacy. U.S. President Barack Obama and German Chancellor Angela Merkel described the Russian and Syrian bombing of the city of Aleppo as "barbarous", the White House said after the two leaders spoke by telephone. Fighting intensified a week into a new Russian-backed government offensive to capture all of Syria's largest city and crush the last remaining urban stronghold of the rebellion. Moscow and its ally,...

Secretary of State John Kerry threatened on Wednesday to end all cooperation between the United States and Russia to stop Syria's civil war, unless Russian and Syrian government attacks on Aleppo end. More than 250 people are believed to have been killed in the besieged city in the last week. Kerry's warning came in a telephone call Wednesday to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, the State Department said, describing the latest U.S. ultimatum in Syria's 5½-year conflict. Many have gone unfulfilled, including President Barack Obama's declaration that the U.S. would take military action if Syrian President Bashar Assad crossed the...

In a striking interview with German journalist Jürgen Todenhöfer published today the German press including the prominent newspaper Focus, a militant jihadist commander said that US weapons are being delivered to Jabhat Al-Nusra by governments that Washington supports, adding that American instructors were in Syria to teach how to use the new equipment. “Yes, the US supports the opposition [in Syria], but not directly. They support the countries that support us. But we are not yet satisfied with this support,” Jabhat al-Nusra unit commander Abu Al Ezz said in an interview with Koelner Stadt-Anzeiger newspaper from the city of Aleppo....

Two days prior to devastating aerial attacks, Michael Ratney, the U.S. special envoy to Syria, was told the Assad regime was planning to hit the Aleppo facilities of the Syrian Civil Defense, a volunteer rescue group. Raed al-Saleh, the head of the organization, which is widely known as the White Helmets, was in Manhattan last week, where he told not only Ratney, but envoys from the Netherlands, Britain, and Canada. He said intercepted communications from military officers in the Assad regime signaled imminent plans to bomb several rescue centers, according to two sources who were in the room when al-Saleh...

At least 23 civilians were killed in renewed government airstrikes on the contested city of Aleppo, Syrian activists said Sunday, as the United Nations Security Council convened an emergency meeting on the spiraling violence in Syria. At the start of that meeting the U.N.'s top envoy to Syria accused the government of unleashing "unprecedented military violence" against civilians in Aleppo. Staffan de Mistura said Syria's declaration of a military offensive to retake rebel-held eastern Aleppo has led to one of the worst weeks of the 5 1/2-year war with dozens of airstrikes against residential areas and buildings causing scores of...

The United States on Sunday called Russia's action in Syria "barbarism" not counter-terrorism while Moscow's U.N. envoy said ending the war "is almost an impossible task now" as Syrian government forces, backed by Moscow, bombed the city of Aleppo. The United Nations Security Council met on Sunday at the request of the United States, Britain and France to discuss the escalation of fighting in Aleppo following the announcement on Thursday of an offensive by the Syrian army to retake the city. "What Russia is sponsoring and doing is not counter-terrorism, it is barbarism," U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha...

ussia's ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, told the Security Council on Sunday that peace in Syria was "almost an impossible task now," according to Reuters. Russia and the United States, who back opposing sides in the Syrian civil war, have been trying to salvage a ceasefire deal that effectively collapsed ...

Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, told the UN Security Council on Sunday that Russia's action in Syria was barbarism, not counter-terrorism, according to Reuters. The ambassadors of Britain and France said war crimes have been committed there. .....

The United States was relegated to the sidelines of the Syrian war on Friday as an all-out assault by Syrian government and Russian forces on opposition-held Aleppo threatened to unleash a new refugee wave and drive U.S.-backed rebels into the ranks of al Qaeda’s Syrian branch, U.S. officials and experts said. Moscow’s direct participation in the offensive left fading hope for U.S.-Russian peace efforts, raising the likelihood that U.S. President Barack Obama’s successor will inherit a worsening conflict. Entering its sixth year, the Syrian civil war already has left some 250,000 people dead, uprooted more than 11 million and provided...

After the United States and "Coalition" aircraft attacked Syrian Army positions "by mistake" – which killed 62 and injured over 100 Syrian Soldiers – Russia says the next mistake will be the pilot's last, as new Rules of Engagement are now in effect. Two days ago, on 17 September, US-led coalition jets bombed Syrian government forces’ positions near the eastern city of Deir ez-Zor, killing 62 troops and "paving the way" for Islamic State militants, the Syrian Army General Command told the state television. The bombing took place on al-Tharda Mountain in the region of Deir ez-Zor and caused casualties...

<p>“Nobody believes in it. You’re like, ‘Fuck this,’” a former Green Beret says of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian militias. “Everyone on the ground knows they are jihadis. No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort, and they know they are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, ‘Fuck it, who cares?’”</p>

<p>“Nobody believes in it. You’re like, ‘Fuck this,’” a former Green Beret says of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian militias. “Everyone on the ground knows they are jihadis. No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort, and they know they are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, ‘Fuck it, who cares?’”</p>

The bodies of the three soldiers killed last week were transferred to the US Consulate in the Iraqi city of Erbil to be flown to the US at a later time, the source said late on Tuesday. The source named the slain servicemen as Levi Johnson, Jordan Andrew and Will Savage adding that they had been assisting Kurdish forces for around a year in northern Syria.

Syrian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners have over the groups they have financed and trained in the bitter five-year-old civil war. The fighting has intensified over the last two months, as CIA-armed units and Pentagon-armed ones have repeatedly shot at each other while maneuvering through contested territory on the northern outskirts of Aleppo, U.S. officials and rebel leaders have confirmed. In mid-February, a CIA-armed militia called...

The Turkish military and the U.S.-led coalition forces launched an operation in the Jarablus region of Syria to clear its borders from the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group early on Wednesday. The operation began at around 4 a.m. with the Turkish artillery launching intense fire on the region followed by Turkish warplanes bombing IS targets. The military operation aimed at clearing the Turkish border from "terrorist elements," halting the new wave of refugee flows and delivering humanitarian aid to civilians in the region, the last significant town held by the jihadist group on the border with Turkey.

In the most direct public warning to Moscow and Damascus to date, the new US commander of American troops in Iraq and Syria is vowing to defend US special operations forces in northern Syria if regime warplanes and artillery again attack in areas where troops are located.

In a video message posted to Facebook on Thursday evening, Anders Fogh Rasmussen appealed to the US to be the world’s “policeman” and to stop “leading from behind”. […] “Obama’s decision to draw the infamous red line to Assad’s use of chemical weapons in Syria and then not follow it up with action was, in my opinion, a disaster,” Rasmussen said in a video message posted to Facebook. …

“DEVASTATING AND overwhelming.” Those are the conditions in the ancient and once-great metropolis of Aleppo, according to the head of delegation for the International Committee of the Red Cross, Marianne Gasser, who was in the Syrian city recently. “We hear that dozens of civilians are being killed every day and scores more injured from shells, mortars and rockets,” Ms. Gasser said. “The bombing is constant. The violence is threatening hundreds of thousands of people’s lives, homes and livelihoods.”

A newly released intelligence report from the Pentagon shows that the U.S. government knew that supporting jihadists in the fight against Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad would produce a fundamentalist Islamic State in Eastern Syria — and that Obama’s supposed “anti-ISIS” coalition knowingly backed ISIS and other Islamic terrorists for precisely that purpose. The heavily redacted Defense Department report, obtained by watchdog Judicial Watch via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, shows once again that, contrary to the false narrative peddled by the establishment press, the rise of the savage terror group known as ISIS was actually deliberate policy. Now, the...

A Syrian opposition group whose members beheaded a child captive near Aleppo on Tuesday had been part of a US-vetted alliance and been supplied with anti-tank missiles until a year ago. Images of the killing are widely seen as among the most shocking of the war and continued to receive condemnation, with Amnesty International describing the killing as having “truly plumbed the depths of depravity”. A US State Department spokesman described reports of the killing as “appalling” and said proof that the killers were linked to the group, known as Nour al-din al-Zenki, would lead to any further backing being...

Hillary Clinton will order a "full review" of the United States' strategy on Syria as a "first key task" of her presidency, resetting the policy to emphasise the "murderous" nature of the Assad regime, foreign policy adviser with her campaign has said. <-SNIP-> Speaking on the sidelines of the Democratic National Convention, Mr Bash, who is advising the party's presidential nominee, said a Clinton administration would seek to bring "moral clarity" to the US strategy on the Syrian crises. <-SNIP-> Mr Bash describes a foreign policy more hawkish than that of the current administration. He said there were a "lot...

US military confirms it is investigating what could be one of the worst incidents of civilian deaths by coalition forces At least 85 civilians, including almost a dozen children, have been killed after US air strikes targeted an area in northern Syria held by Islamic State (Isis/Daesh) fighters, a monitoring group has said. Some eight families were reportedly wiped out in the IS-controlled village of Tokhar near Manbij on Tuesday (19 July), in what could be one of the deadliest bombings of civilians by coalition forces since the start of operations in the country.

Late Thursday evening, the Wall Street Journal reported, 51 State Department officials signed a statement condemning U.S. policy in Syria in which they repeatedly call for “targeted military strikes against the Damascus government and urging regime change as the only way to defeat Islamic State.” “In other words,” as Zero Hedge summarized, “over 50 top ‘diplomats’ are urging to eliminate [Syrian Pres. Bashar al] Assad in order to ‘defeat ISIS’, the same ISIS which top US ‘diplomats’ had unleashed previously in order to … eliminate Assad.” This gordian knot created by United States foreign policy — and intensified by that...

We’re going to war — either hybrid in nature to break the Russian state back to its 1990s subordination, or a hot war (which will destroy our country). Our citizens should know this, but they don’t because our media is dumbed down in its “Pravda”-like support for our “respectable,” highly aggressive government. We are being led, as C. Wright Mills said in the 1950s, by a government full of “crackpot realists: in the name of realism they’ve constructed a paranoid reality all their own.” Our media has credited Hillary Clinton with wonderful foreign policy experience, unlike Trump, without really noting...

Kurdish-led fighters completed their encirclement Friday of a key town held by the Islamic State group in northern Syria, part of a Western-backed offensive that could see a major strategic victory over the militants. The advance on Manbij, near the Turkish border, coincided with a Syrian army offensive supported by Russian airstrikes that brought troops closer to the city of Raqqa, the IS extremists’ de facto capital. Two years after their blitz across the Euphrates River valley, the IS militants are coming under increasing pressure on territory they control in Syria and Iraq, as well as on a stronghold in...

Moscow on Friday proposed that Russia and United States, which have been flying separate bombing campaigns in Syria, launch joint air strikes against jihadists from next week, a proposal the Pentagon swiftly rejected. "We are proposing to the US, as the head of the International Syria Support Group, to take part as of May 25 in joint operations between the Russian air force and the air force of the coalition," Russian defence minister Sergei Shoigu said in televised comments. Shoigu said that the proposal included strikes against Jabhat al-Nusra and other illegal armed groups that do not support a frail...

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry met Saudi Arabia's King Salman in Jeddah on Sunday to discuss the fragile truce in Syria, before broader talks with Russia, Iran and other countries in Vienna on Tuesday. Kerry has said he hopes to strengthen a "cessation of hostilities" agreement between Syrian government forces and rebels, which has been undermined by fighting in some areas, and to increase humanitarian aid deliveries to besieged areas. On Friday, he said the meetings with the king and the Saudi interior and defense ministers - the two most senior princes - would try "to make sure that...

A Russian official has criticized Washington's lack of authorization from Syria to deploy troops. The UN warned Damascus and Moscow of increased violence against civilians after a hospital was bombed, leaving 30 dead. Moscow sees the deployment of an additional 250 US military personnel in Syria as an affront to Damascus' territorial sovereignty, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told Russia's state-owned TASS news agency on Friday. "If we are talking from the position of the foreign minister, we - of course - cannot not be concerned over the fact that the US carries out such actions without coordination with...

Fierce clashes between U.S.-backed Syrian fighters and insurgent groups north of Aleppo killed dozens of combatants, a spokesman and a monitoring group said on Thursday. The Syria Democratic Forces alliance, which includes the powerful Kurdish YPG militia, has been fighting insurgents, some also supported by foreign states via Turkey, in northern Aleppo province for several months. Washington, which is leading an aerial campaign against Islamic State, supports the SDF in the separate fight against the jihadists around areas they control farther east. The YPG has proved the most effective partner on the ground for the U.S.-led campaign. SDF spokesman Talal...

Clashes between militias trained by the CIA and the Pentagon are intensifying as bitter fighting has broken out near Aleppo and the Turkish border. Chicago Tribune: The fighting has intensified over the past two months, as CIA-armed units and Pentagon-armed ones have repeatedly shot at each other as they have maneuvered through contested territory on the northern outskirts of Aleppo, U.S. officials and rebel leaders have confirmed. In mid-February, a CIA-armed militia called Fursan al Haq, or Knights of Righteousness, was run out of the town of Marea, about 20 miles north of Aleppo, by Pentagon-backed Syrian Democratic Forces moving...

The Pentagon wants to reboot a failed program designed to train Syrian rebels in the fight against the Islamic State, even though this same $500 million dollar program had almost nothing to show for itself. The goal was to train 5,000 fighters, but the first class of 54 melted and scattered after being attacked by the al-Nusra front, the al-Qaida affiliate in Syria. The second class of so-called moderate rebels handed over at least 25 percent of their U.S. military gear to al-Nusra. Pentagon officials now say they’ve identified what elements of the program to tweak to make sure they...

Reuters is reporting that Turkey is asking the United States and other western allies to participate in a massive ground invasion of Syria. But of course the Turks are not exactly sitting around and waiting for their western allies to get on board. Turkey shelled northern Syria for a fourth consecutive day on Tuesday, even though the Obama administration has been asking them to stop. The targets were Kurdish and Syrian military positions, and the goal appears to be to slow down their advance toward the Turkish border. The Sunni militants that Turkey has been supporting for five years are...